Kent Bush: Stephen Covey's idea could be game changer

Thursday

Dec 29, 2011 at 12:01 AMDec 29, 2011 at 10:26 AM

Normally, I’m not a big fan of the self-help genre. But I got a very different feeling reading Stephen Covey’s newest endeavor into the field. Covey became famous for his book “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.” He milked that same cow with “The 8th Habit, from Effectiveness to Greatness.” But with his latest release, “The 3rd Alternative,” Covey captured an idea that could be a game changer.

Kent Bush

Normally, I’m not a big fan of the self-help genre.

Maybe it is because I see it as a restating of the obvious in order to fleece some cash from willing sheep. Maybe I don’t like the cheerleader mentality that seems out of touch with reality. Maybe it is because alleged business leaders adopt silly slogans because they feel profound when they do the same thing as last year with a new name.

But I got a very different feeling reading Stephen Covey’s newest endeavor into the field. Covey became famous for his book “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.” He milked that same cow with “The 8th Habit, from Effectiveness to Greatness.”

But with his latest release, “The 3rd Alternative,” Covey captured an idea that could be a game changer.

Apathy in politics has grown because everything is broken down into two categories. Republicans oppose Democrats. Liberals oppose conservatives. Very few people find themselves aligning perfectly with either group and the harder the line is drawn, the less they find themselves fitting in with either group.

But the two-sided argument is not just apparent in politics. In most conflicts, there is my opinion and the wrong opinion. You’re either with me or against me.

The common answer has always been compromise. But compromise merely frustrates both sides of the equation and leaves both sides agreeing to a solution that they don’t fully support.

That’s where Covey’s idea of third alternative offers a better answer.

The third alternative seeks a solution that reshapes the argument, finds common ground and builds a new solution on that common ground.

One of my favorite episodes of the television show “The Office” showed Michael Scott trying to find a solution to a problem that was better than a win-win. He wanted to find the win-win-win scenario.

The character tells his staff, “The important difference here is with win-win-win, we all win. Me, too, I win for having successfully mediated a conflict at work.”

The Third Alternative is not as humorous, but it does help find real solutions rather than mediated, unpopular compromises.

Covey’s book is not concise. However, it does spend some of its excessive verbiage giving real world examples of how this type of thinking finds synergy for both sides of the conflict and can yield best-case solutions to disagreements from mundane daily issues to major world crises.

It is funny how things happen. Having read the book, I had a friend bring it up during a meeting last week. Then, this week, I see a great example of how this type of logic was used to pursue a big answer to a big problem.

I don’t know that the scientists seeking an end to the epidemic of malaria in developing countries have read Covey’s new book. But even if it were inadvertent, the thought process followed the “Third Alternative” mindset.

Malaria is a disease spread by mosquito bite. Each year, more than 225 million people are affected by the disease and more than 800,000 die from its effects. Obvious solutions have been to avoid mosquito bites and treat the infected with medicine.

You can put all the nets you want around your bed and wear enough deet to kill a moose, but even one mosquito bite can bring you face to face with the Grim Reaper. The medicines used to treat malaria are not expensive in comparison to other medications. However, getting them to rural Africans in time to treat the disease before it becomes deadly will always be an issue. There aren’t a lot of free clinics popping up in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Those are two solutions but neither was really solving anything.

But now a group of scientists is working on a true third alternative.

On Dec. 22, researchers at Johns Hopkins published a report showing they had been able to change the genetic makeup of mosquitos to increase their immune system and suppress the insect’s ability to carry and pass on the parasite that causes malaria.

They also offered evidence that the change did not affect the mosquito’s general fitness in a negative way.

“Malaria is one of world’s most serious public health problems. Mosquitoes and the malaria parasite are becoming more resistant to insecticides and drugs, and new control methods are urgently needed. We’ve taken a giant step towards the development of new mosquito strains that could be released to limit malaria transmission, but further studies are needed to render this approach safe and fail-proof,” said George Dimopoulos, PhD, senior author of the study.

There is no compromise in their approach. They didn’t try to find a better way to prevent bites or treat victims. They tried to find a way to make inevitable bites less likely to lead to infection and lessen the need for medications that are often inaccessible.

Covey quotes Albert Einstein who said, “We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.”

In every conflict, a mutually beneficial answer exists. But both sides have to be willing to work together to find it.